Guild Wars 2

Kamui.3150:

Hi Gaile, thanks for this info, it’s a huge relief for me and anyone else trying to complete the Winter’s Presence shoulders. However, I do have a few questions that I would like to ask, and hope you have the answers to.

• Will the candy cane achievement be given similar treatment? It’s not required for the shoulders, but it’s still one that is on a similar progression scale as Festive Imbiber.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement progress the Wintersday meta after Jan 12? This is mainly a curiosity thing, am interested to know if the meta achieve will be locked after Jan 12 is over, even though anyone that really wants the meta won’t need it.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement’s progress carry to next Wintersday, similar to the Grawnk ones did from last year? Just another curiosity deal.

These need to be answered.

Additionally: Are the devs aware that since the delicate, glittering, unique & pristine snowflake → wintersday gift recipe was disabled there will be absolutely no supply once the wintersday activities are disabled? This will mean massive unmatched speculation in the gift market, and a massive crash in the snowflake market as they’re used for essentially nothing once the event ends.

Unhappy about the disappearance of AP for single wintersday daily items that you kept last year, which also brings up my displeasure with the single dailies losing any AP for completion of them, even if you don’t do enough of the dailies to get the daily achievement. And no to all the haters, “just do enough dailies to get the achievement” is not an acceptable answer.

Thank you for the update! I’m excited I can keep imbibing these drinks to get the shoulder skin. With limited play time due to family, work, holidays, and life, this change makes the end goal realistic and possible with some time and luck.
I like the idea of keeping the karma merchant, and introducing drink recipes to prevent prices from getting out of control.
With the pressure of completing this before the end of Wintersday lifted, I feel like I’m enjoying the game more already.

ppl that think they’ll wait: the limited supply left over after holidays? drinks will be 1g ea min, watch.

Aveneo.2068:

Leaving the Festive Imbiber active is cool and everything (and thanks for the update), but the drinks that are required for the achievement will still be gone after the event so it kinda defeats the purpose… And no, the single box a day from the christmas tree in our home instance is not a viable method imo.

So unless you guys add some cooking recipes to a vendor so we could brew our own festive drinks and such or lower the requirement to something around 2500 it would be rather pointless to leave an achievement active that can’t be completed anyway (unless we fork over cash-for-gold on a finite TP supply).

Just my opinion on the matter. Sorry if it sounds a bit harsh.

You can craft the peppermint food which counts to the achievement, further the Star of Gratitude gives a chance of the wintersday gifts (albeit unreliably).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Aveneo.2068:

Leaving the Festive Imbiber active is cool and everything (and thanks for the update), but the drinks that are required for the achievement will still be gone after the event so it kinda defeats the purpose… And no, the single box a day from the christmas tree in our home instance is not a viable method imo.

So unless you guys add some cooking recipes to a vendor so we could brew our own festive drinks and such or lower the requirement to something around 2500 it would be rather pointless to leave an achievement active that can’t be completed anyway (unless we fork over cash-for-gold on a finite TP supply).

Just my opinion on the matter. Sorry if it sounds a bit harsh.

You can craft the peppermint food which counts to the achievement, further the Star of Gratitude gives a chance of the wintersday gifts (albeit unreliably).

Last I checked, crafting one of the peppermint foods requires 25 of the candy canes themselves. So you’re better off just scarfing the candy canes themselves if you just want the achievement to progress. Although it’s better to craft if you’re going for the actual usefulness of the food itself, that plus the karma bonus is better from the food if you look just at # of minutes gained (30 minutes per 25 candy canes when converted to food versus 25 minutes if you consume the candy canes themselves. Although you can consume the candy canes individually just before you’re going to finish an event or such, so there’s another difference there).

Kamui.3150:

Hi Gaile, thanks for this info, it’s a huge relief for me and anyone else trying to complete the Winter’s Presence shoulders. However, I do have a few questions that I would like to ask, and hope you have the answers to.

• Will the candy cane achievement be given similar treatment? It’s not required for the shoulders, but it’s still one that is on a similar progression scale as Festive Imbiber.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement progress the Wintersday meta after Jan 12? This is mainly a curiosity thing, am interested to know if the meta achieve will be locked after Jan 12 is over, even though anyone that really wants the meta won’t need it.

• Will FI and the candy cane achievement’s progress carry to next Wintersday, similar to the Grawnk ones did from last year? Just another curiosity deal.

This!

Festive Imbiber is a ridiculous achievement if you ask me.

Why has ANet adopted this policy of introducing overly expensive or grindy achievements? Why must we pay for achievements with gold or mindless farming instead of earning them through actual challenge or fun events? Shouldn’t Wintersday be fun?

I don’t understand. The game has been taking increasingly worse turns lately. How can you keep making so many poor decisions, one after the other without proper testing or implementation? Did you just think “oh, let’s make it 10 000 drinks because that’s the first number that popped into my head”? Did you even consider the potential costs involved for the player, in terms of time or gold and consider whether it was balanced or viable?

You are forcefully ensuring only a minority will be able to get these shoulders (thanks to resource limitations that will become increasingly worse once Wintersday ends). If your new policy is to make a game that’s rewarding and fun only for a minority, I honestly think my days in GW2 are numbered. I’m becoming very frustrated lately and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Festive Imbiber is a ridiculous achievement if you ask me.

Why has ANet adopted this policy of introducing overly expensive or grindy achievements? Why must we pay for achievements with gold or mindless farming instead of earning them through actual challenge or fun events? Shouldn’t Wintersday be fun?

I don’t understand. The game has been taking increasingly worse turns lately. How can you keep making so many poor decisions, one after the other without proper testing or implementation? Did you just think “oh, let’s make it 10 000 drinks because that’s the first number that popped into my head”? Did you even consider the potential costs involved for the player, in terms of time or gold and consider whether it was balanced or viable?

You are forcefully ensuring only a minority will be able to get these shoulders (thanks to resource limitations that will become increasingly worse once Wintersday ends). If your new policy is to make a game that’s rewarding and fun only for a minority, I honestly think my days in GW2 are numbered. I’m becoming very frustrated lately and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Free To Play. GW2 is no longer Buy To Play no matter what anyone says it’s now Freemium. The entire design of the game from going FTP forward is how to get gem sales and convert FTP into spenders. I never play FTP games because I can’t stand the design. Grind to the point of grabbing the plastic is all they do, welcome to the new Tyria.

it’s not the 10k drinks for a junk skin that bothers me in this, it’s the lack of a lucrative gamble to be worth buying gifts beyond the silly drinks. in ToT bags there were better items and the bats were more interesting than snow. tho it would be interesting if we could use the snow-skin shoulders and a potion that made us turn yellow, who wouldn’t be all giddy about bedazzling themselves in yellow snow?

What about the sweet (it’s 25k)? Yes I know it’s not part of the skin collection but it’s part of the festive one. Even then the drink and sweet is still needed to complete the whole festive achievement (all 18 achievements too).

No I’m not complaining as I rather have the drink being able to get it done at my own pace.

The candy cane is 2.5k, not 25k iirc. Also, by just playing a bit of bell choir each day I get almost 400 drinks a day. The JP and the PvP event are way to stressful to succesfully farm.

EDIT: Also, it’s been like this since GW1. It’s almost like a tradition. But keep the salt to a minimum, as it does tend to melt snow.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• We will be leaving the Festive Imbiber achievement active throughout the year.

Thank u so much! <3

Yarrmor.8406:

The candy cane is 2.5k, not 25k iirc. Also, by just playing a bit of bell choir each day I get almost 400 drinks a day. The JP and the PvP event are way to stressful to succesfully farm.

EDIT: Also, it’s been like this since GW1. It’s almost like a tradition. But keep the salt to a minimum, as it does tend to melt snow.

I doubt that you’re really getting 400 drinks/~500 gifts a day by playing “a bit of choir bell” – are you sure you don’t count the initial achievements in? As you’ll get quite a lot of gifts for completing the achievements, not so many afterwards = farming the skin without the TP is impossible.

ETA: Maybe it is possible if one is into the jumping puzzle which I have completed only couple of times.

well I have almost 2k drinks so far from farming gifts so ya I think is possible to get 10k without buying any drink just need to farm a lot :/

by farm a lot I mean do jp, I do 16runs in 30 min so jump jump a lot!!

Jana.6831:

Yarrmor.8406:

The candy cane is 2.5k, not 25k iirc. Also, by just playing a bit of bell choir each day I get almost 400 drinks a day. The JP and the PvP event are way to stressful to succesfully farm.

EDIT: Also, it’s been like this since GW1. It’s almost like a tradition. But keep the salt to a minimum, as it does tend to melt snow.

I doubt that you’re really getting 400 drinks/~500 gifts a day by playing “a bit of choir bell” – are you sure you don’t count the initial achievements in? As you’ll get quite a lot of gifts for completing the achievements, not so many afterwards = farming the skin without the TP is impossible.

Nope, I do a few rounds of Bell Choir, do my Daily, Bell Choir, Daily crafting, Bell Choir, Daily Fractals, Bell Choir, etc. I have 1200 drinks already and I haven’t even logged in today. If I keep this up, or maybe even step it up a bit, I will have it before the end of the year, without the TP. It’s very very do-able. People whine to much. Sure, it’s grindy, but Winter’s Presence is like the endgame of Wintersday 2015. You can’t expect it to be easy.

Yarrmor.8406:

Nope, I do a few rounds of Bell Choir, do my Daily, Bell Choir, Daily crafting, Bell Choir, Daily Fractals, Bell Choir, etc. I have 1200 drinks already and I haven’t even logged in today. If I keep this up, or maybe even step it up a bit, I will have it before the end of the year, without the TP. It’s very very do-able. People whine to much. Sure, it’s grindy, but Winter’s Presence is like the endgame of Wintersday 2015. You can’t expect it to be easy.

So you did count the initial gifts you got for doing this stuff (achievements) in – it will be a lot harder afterwards.

Jana.6831:

Yarrmor.8406:

Nope, I do a few rounds of Bell Choir, do my Daily, Bell Choir, Daily crafting, Bell Choir, Daily Fractals, Bell Choir, etc. I have 1200 drinks already and I haven’t even logged in today. If I keep this up, or maybe even step it up a bit, I will have it before the end of the year, without the TP. It’s very very do-able. People whine to much. Sure, it’s grindy, but Winter’s Presence is like the endgame of Wintersday 2015. You can’t expect it to be easy.

So you did count the initial gifts you got for doing this stuff (achievements) in – it will be a lot harder afterwards.

I had all the initial gifts the very first day. I ended up with 360 ish drinks that day. The 2nd day I ended up with 890 drinks (without the initial gifts), and the 3rd day I ended up with nearly 1200.

Funny enough, the first day was the hardest imho. I spent too much time in one go on Bell Choir and it became tedious. Now I just alternate between dailies and Bell Choir, etc. It’s so much more do-able.

Yarrmor.8406:

I had all the initial gifts the very first day. I ended up with 360 ish drinks that day. The 2nd day I ended up with 890 drinks (without the initial gifts), and the 3rd day I ended up with nearly 1200.

Funny enough, the first day was the hardest imho. I spent too much time in one go on Bell Choir and it became tedious. Now I just alternate between dailies and Bell Choir, etc. It’s so much more do-able.

Ok, although it’s very hard to believe that it’s “just a bit of choir bell” as every full round gives about 25? presents. And presents have got a 80% chance of dropping beverages.

Jana.6831:

Yarrmor.8406:

I had all the initial gifts the very first day. I ended up with 360 ish drinks that day. The 2nd day I ended up with 890 drinks (without the initial gifts), and the 3rd day I ended up with nearly 1200.

Funny enough, the first day was the hardest imho. I spent too much time in one go on Bell Choir and it became tedious. Now I just alternate between dailies and Bell Choir, etc. It’s so much more do-able.

Ok, although it’s very hard to believe that it’s “just a bit of choir bell” as every full round gives about 25? presents. And presents have got a 80% chance of dropping beverages.

A full complete round gives you exactly 18 presents. And I think the 80% is a lie, it’s less or I’m just unlucky. I complete 5-10 rounds, then I do something else, and when I’m done with that I go back to Bell Choir, do another 5-10 rounds, and do something else again.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• We will be leaving the Festive Imbiber achievement active throughout the year.

That’s not really a solution.

I’ll grant you it’s a bandage job, and a good one at that. Committing to the achievement staying open all year gives you time to fix (all year) it without also committing to a method as to how.

I’ve seen others suggest splitting the achievement, and I agree with them. 1000 drinks for the Masterful Toast item is in line with the other parts of the collection. 10000 drinks for the Spirited Drinker title is in line with other similar titles.

I’ve seen Winter’s Presence compared to Nightfury, but I took a look through the recipe for that item and it has expensive written all over it. The Mystic Forge items for Winter’s Presence come out to about 60g (all cost estimates in this post are very rough, intended only to be in the right magnitude), which is affordable for just about everyone. There’s nothing really rare or difficult to get involved in it. The remaining items are… well… several normal days just playing the game.

Except Masterful Toast. Honestly, I think I’ll chalk that one up as a mistake. I think it’s probable that someone decided to add a title to Festive Imbiber and increased it’s difficulty accordingly without paying attention to what other achievements it affected, or more likely, it was either designed as a nifty title and someone didn’t pay attention to what it entailed it when putting together the Winter’s Presence collection.

I don’t think it’s at all likely that it was designed this way as a gold sink. It’s just too blatant; the items are easy to get, but tedious in quantity. If they wanted a gold sink, there’s three other items available that were already there to do so, and without all this drama, too, as that stemmed solely from the time-limited (and now supply-limited), Festive Imbiber achievement. For example, instead of 50 of each ingredient for those items, use 250. That would bring those three items to about 300g, add another 100g or so for the drinks assuming the achievement is split as explained above, and you have a neat skin at a respectable 400g price point.

This method spreads that cost across four items (and 9 unique crafting ingredients), but more importantly, three of those items can be acquired any time of the year to complete the collection and the fourth is a nearly invisible opportunity cost. A player interested in Winter’s Presence can play the festival normally and acquire the time-limited achievements required over the course of the month, and then gather the materials for the “gifts” over several months, just as we do for other flashy item skins.

As it stands, even with the time limit removed, this achievement is a big gold wall, oddly similar to the old situation with legendary precursors.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and have a wonderful Wintersday.

What’s the point of leaving the achievement active if we can only get one gift a day in our home instance? It’s not gonna be completed either way.

I hope not only this achievement stays active, but the Sweet Tooth one as well. I loved how you could work on these in Guild Wars throughout the year, outside of events. The shoulder piece is still here next year if I can’t make it for this Wintersday. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that certain items are prestige, but possible to earn by everyone over time. This is way better than limited availability from items only being available during a certain time period and never returning in the future (e.g., Bunny Ears).

PS: Thank you for letting us know how long the event is scheduled to last. I wish all events would do this, not only tell us when it starts, but for how long they are intended to last. We don’t always know, and it can help make people feel a slight bit less stressed and frustrated to know that you have x amount of time to do something.

yurdun.2501:

psizone.8437:

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’ve noticed that you’ve had a few questions about Wintersday, and specifically about the Wintersday Presence Collection. We’d like to share the following info with you:

• Wintersday is scheduled to end on January 12, 2016.
• We will be leaving the Festive Imbiber achievement active throughout the year.
• We will not be able to change the text that indicates it’s a Wintersday-only achievement, but you will be able to continue to imbide (in moderation, please – think of the dolyak children!) to gain that achievement.

Enjoy the festival and we’ll see you in the game!

Hey Gaile, is it possible that you guys can keep the Karma merchant available year round to exchange Karma for gifts in order to have this as a casual long term goal?

Where is this Karma merchant?

It’s in Divinity’s Reach, he’s just down the stairs where the Queens Gauntlet door is, next to the Tixx portal.

He trades Karma for Wintersday Gifts each day (or infinitely if you have Flawless Snowflakes and Karma)

Artanis.4963:

I’ve seen Winter’s Presence compared to Nightfury, but I took a look through the recipe for that item and it has expensive written all over it. The Mystic Forge items for Winter’s Presence come out to about 60g (all cost estimates in this post are very rough, intended only to be in the right magnitude), which is affordable for just about everyone. There’s nothing really rare or difficult to get involved in it. The remaining items are… well… several normal days just playing the game.

Except Masterful Toast. Honestly, I think I’ll chalk that one up as a mistake. I think it’s probable that someone decided to add a title to Festive Imbiber and increased it’s difficulty accordingly without paying attention to what other achievements it affected, or more likely, it was either designed as a nifty title and someone didn’t pay attention to what it entailed it when putting together the Winter’s Presence collection.

I don’t think it’s at all likely that it was designed this way as a gold sink. It’s just too blatant; the items are easy to get, but tedious in quantity. If they wanted a gold sink, there’s three other items available that were already there to do so, and without all this drama, too, as that stemmed solely from the time-limited (and now supply-limited), Festive Imbiber achievement.

I really hope that is the case, but with the direction the game has been going, I would not be surprised if it really was made as a gold sink. And that is just… not fun, not in general, and especially not for a Holiday festival item. I just feel stressed playing and opening gifts, now, because 10,000 feels impossible. I have been focusing my playtime on nothing but Wintersday and dailies, and have only gotten about 200. The playtime required for reaching 10,000 before the twelfth is insane, I am not going to be able to make it, not with the holidays. And getting it from buying drinks on the TP is just an insane paywall at the moment.

Seriously, 10,000 is way too much for a thing like this. For the title alone, sure, but for the item needed to make the special item? No.

Unless they leave other reliable sources of wintersday drinks ingame, it will be a poor bandaid at best.
The single gift from the home instance tree isn’t remotely enough to make it. Not in a year, and not even in ten.
It could work if they left the karma gift vendor available. That could be a way. Albeit, making the amount needed for the toast lower could be far more simple.
Right now, i can’t see it as anything else than a gold sink disguised as a collection item.

Manuhell.2759:

Right now, i can’t see it as anything else than a gold sink disguised as a collection item.

Welcome to Guild Wars.

10k is really do-able, everyone needs to stop whining.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’ve noticed that you’ve had a few questions about Wintersday, and specifically about the Wintersday Presence Collection. We’d like to share the following info with you:

• Wintersday is scheduled to end on January 12, 2016.
• We will be leaving the Festive Imbiber achievement active throughout the year.
• We will not be able to change the text that indicates it’s a Wintersday-only achievement, but you will be able to continue to imbide (in moderation, please – think of the dolyak children!) to gain that achievement.

Enjoy the festival and we’ll see you in the game!

Thank you Gaile for the infos. Its nice to know that we have all year to get the imbiber achievement.

So candy cane one is still only during Wintersday then, correct?

First I would like to thank you guys at Anet for the awesome game and all that you do. That being said I would like to offer my 2 cents worth as well. I appreciate that you have listened to us and decided to leave the achievement active for the rest of the year. I realize that does help and will allow a larger population in game achieve the shoulders. I do however still feel that without an alternate source of Wintersday gifts (other than the Tree of Generosity) it is still a little too steep. Yes we will be able to buy them off the TP but I feel that the price will be a wee bit inflated from the lack of supply. I understand and have no problem with the shoulders being a prestige item that takes a bit more of a grind to get but I still think it is a bit too far out of reach for more than half of the community.

That being said I would also like to toss this little tidbit in. I have been playing since beta and even played GW1 since just after launch. I have been out of game for about a year due to life and family situations and upon coming back I have seen you guys working a lot more on new weapon skins, and other Black Lion items. This is in addition to the hew HoT content. While I love this, there is far too much stuff cycling through with these large sinks to even get a small percentage of this stuff for the average or even more player. Don’t mistake that as me complaining about all the new skins and items. I am simply trying to point out that it makes the things like the shoulders or other items in game sometimes a bit more difficult than you may originally intend. You may think “what is a reasonable goal for players to achieve to get x item?” but you really have to take into consideration what a reasonable goal for players to achieve to get x item while not completely negating their ability to work on anything else for 4 weeks etc.

In addition, the standard Wintersday event achievements for the meta do not reasonably allow newer players to participate. In order to achieve the meta and get that reward you have to be able to defeat Jormag 3 times. While I understand this achievement, it makes it next to impossible for a newer player just picking up the game to achieve the meta for Wintersday. Perhaps that was not the idea to allow newer players to achieve that but again, thats just my 2 cents worth.

Thanks for listening to my rant and again I do notice and appreciate all the good work, cheers.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Doesn’t change the fact this was meant to be bought not earned. Post Winter’s Day the gifts won’t drop so it’s buy buy buy (x10,000).

Or it is simply meant not to be rushed in one Event …

Gaile Gray.6029:

• We will be leaving the Festive Imbiber achievement active throughout the year.

Hello Gaile, how am I supposed to get the wintersday drinks throughout the year? The tree in the home istance isn’t going to be enough let’s be honest, will I have to buy them on the tp?
How does that help, isn’t it just the same as before, either I grind the wintersday events or buy them?

As others have suggested let us brew our own booze. Add some karma recipes that we can buy, most of the items already exist, (alcohol aplenty, butter, apples, sugar, nutmeg, buttermilk, water, etc.) add some of the missing ones as karma items. It’ll be a good way to burn off karma if you want to keep it account bound or burn gold if it’s tradable.

i don’t understand why some people are happy with this solution. this solution makes things worse.

my plan was to wait for prices to drop near the end of wintersday. now, that’s less likely to happen. if i had the gold, i’d buy every single one of these on the tp and raise the price to 1g starting in february.

Thanx but its still a stupid number of drinks to drink lol

While it’s nice to finally have a date on how long Wintersday lasts this whole solution is really disappointing.

How is someone who has a 40h a week job and only play casually supposed to finish this until January 12th? You’d have to rack up around 400 drinks a day from now on to finish this and just extending the whole thing means it’s a pure gold sink instead of an real Achievement.

I think someone forgot some of the real principles: https://t.co/K6nvOi8Ond
and I do hope we can find a better solution than this.

I’m glad that something is being done about it, but without a good source of drinks after Wintersday ends, I’m not sure it changes anything.

I can get a present a day from the home instance tree, but one drink a day for 10,000 drinks hardly seems useful.

ShadowbaneX.6273:

As others have suggested let us brew our own booze. Add some karma recipes that we can buy, most of the items already exist, (alcohol aplenty, butter, apples, sugar, nutmeg, buttermilk, water, etc.) add some of the missing ones as karma items. It’ll be a good way to burn off karma if you want to keep it account bound or burn gold if it’s tradable.

No problem, it’ll be added as a 400 Scribe recipe. j/k

Kamui.3150:

No problem, it’ll be added as a 400 Scribe recipe. j/k

Heh, no doubt, but it could be a nice way of letting lower level haracters make some gold. Most of the ingredients aren’t that hard to find. Unless they make the booze hard to get a hold of, it could be something low level cooks could easily do.

I was also thinking of having higher level booze make count more towards the track à la Guild Wars 1, and could be a higher level recipe…but that’s mostly redundant with the “consume all” option.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Festive Imbiber is a ridiculous achievement if you ask me.

Why has ANet adopted this policy of introducing overly expensive or grindy achievements? Why must we pay for achievements with gold or mindless farming instead of earning them through actual challenge or fun events? Shouldn’t Wintersday be fun?

I don’t understand. The game has been taking increasingly worse turns lately. How can you keep making so many poor decisions, one after the other without proper testing or implementation? Did you just think “oh, let’s make it 10 000 drinks because that’s the first number that popped into my head”? Did you even consider the potential costs involved for the player, in terms of time or gold and consider whether it was balanced or viable?

You are forcefully ensuring only a minority will be able to get these shoulders (thanks to resource limitations that will become increasingly worse once Wintersday ends). If your new policy is to make a game that’s rewarding and fun only for a minority, I honestly think my days in GW2 are numbered. I’m becoming very frustrated lately and I don’t think I’m the only one.

If you have/haven’t played Guild Wars 1 then you would/wouldn’t know that this isn’t a “New Policy” on how these types of things work.

More so if you consider the original drinking track in GW1 required that you had to drink X amount of drinks first then at a certain intoxication level it started ticking off time spent drunk so long as you STAYED at that same level consistently in order to keep the timer going without having to restart the entire process.

It wasn’t until way later that they changed it to a point system with each drink giving something like 1-3 points with a total of 10k needed, but you were not getting several hundred drinks a day and did not have a Trading Post to easily acquire them without having to camp a main city and spam /trade.

It was actually dumbed down quite a bit, and while way easier than those who got it originally it still was a long grind if you didn’t want to or couldn’t be bothered with trying to stand around all day trading/buying.

I am sure other GW1 Veterans can testify to just how many tracks had been “Dumbed Down” over time from the start of and through the last few years of GW1.

So I can agree with you to a point on how 10k is quite a bit (even if left on through out the whole year) seeing as how it can only be advanced by Wintersday drinks, but this is nothing new with ArenaNet let alone them having adopted a "New Policy.

Maybe they should have added a “Wintersday Gift Exchange Merchant” where you could of took the other foods/junk from gifts and exchanged them at a 3-1 rate.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Festive Imbiber is a ridiculous achievement if you ask me.

Why has ANet adopted this policy of introducing overly expensive or grindy achievements? Why must we pay for achievements with gold or mindless farming instead of earning them through actual challenge or fun events? Shouldn’t Wintersday be fun?

I don’t understand. The game has been taking increasingly worse turns lately. How can you keep making so many poor decisions, one after the other without proper testing or implementation? Did you just think “oh, let’s make it 10 000 drinks because that’s the first number that popped into my head”? Did you even consider the potential costs involved for the player, in terms of time or gold and consider whether it was balanced or viable?

You are forcefully ensuring only a minority will be able to get these shoulders (thanks to resource limitations that will become increasingly worse once Wintersday ends). If your new policy is to make a game that’s rewarding and fun only for a minority, I honestly think my days in GW2 are numbered. I’m becoming very frustrated lately and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Free To Play. GW2 is no longer Buy To Play no matter what anyone says it’s now Freemium. The entire design of the game from going FTP forward is how to get gem sales and convert FTP into spenders. I never play FTP games because I can’t stand the design. Grind to the point of grabbing the plastic is all they do, welcome to the new Tyria.

No, just NO!

All I read here is hate for F2P and F2P players that causes you to have flawed and misguided theories of why there is a 10k drink achievement for Wintersday.

Which of course has nothing to do with the core game going F2P, but looks to have everything to do with blaming another player type for something that really only impacts you (and other full players).

Have you even tried the whole F2P model?

If so then you would know that its design (and limitations) is actually quite ingenious compared to other F2P games as its focus is not in trying to milk new F2P players from their money.

They have actually did a remarkable job with creating a F2P game that will actually let you enjoy just about every aspect of the core game (even with a few major limitations) without having to pay anything if they were so inclined, and it really is what they advertise. Simply a way to see what is offered while letting their game do the talking for them.

I have been playing since launch (this account right here), but I did create a F2P to introduce my kids to the game and be on equal level with them while they were seeing if this was something that they liked enough to purchase. It did its job (as advertised), and my kids are waiting for their upgrade come Christmas. All without being blocked off by a “Cash Grab” beyond nudges of seeing why getting the full game was a good thing, and yet at no time did the kids (or I on that account) feel a need (let alone pressure) to have to buy Gems in order to keep playing or accessing the game.

However, going back to the main point of how this isn’t about the game going F2P. F2P cannot even buy/sell the drinks which of course also restricts their ability to obtain the other needed items to complete Winter’s Presence. So where is ArenaNet trying to turn F2P into spenders with this?

Yeah, thats what I thought. Nowhere. So then it really ONLY affects full access players, but even if this was some conspiracy to get you to buy Gems to convert to gold it would be no different than other things ArenaNet has done since launch (well before F2P) with things like the Karka chests and gem bought keys.

Which means in the end this still has nothing to do with being about the game going F2P as they have used similiar types of tactics to encourage your parting of monety since launch. Its ALWAYS been about designing ways to sell Gems, etc to increase sales/profit while in many ways giving us fun options and things.

In the end. You don’t want to buy gems to get gold to buy drinks, and it only affects you if your full access. Similiar things have been done since launch and it does not equal being the fault of F2P. Especially when they cannot even make partial use of the ability your being inconvienced by.

Ariurotl.3718:

Oh wow, that’s a long holiday.

At least Wintersday will cover both Gregorian Christmas (December 25th) and Julian Christmas (January 7th, which is actually December 25th on the Julian Calendar).

Michael Fejervary.8576:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Festive Imbiber is a ridiculous achievement if you ask me.

Why has ANet adopted this policy of introducing overly expensive or grindy achievements? Why must we pay for achievements with gold or mindless farming instead of earning them through actual challenge or fun events? Shouldn’t Wintersday be fun?

I don’t understand. The game has been taking increasingly worse turns lately. How can you keep making so many poor decisions, one after the other without proper testing or implementation? Did you just think “oh, let’s make it 10 000 drinks because that’s the first number that popped into my head”? Did you even consider the potential costs involved for the player, in terms of time or gold and consider whether it was balanced or viable?

You are forcefully ensuring only a minority will be able to get these shoulders (thanks to resource limitations that will become increasingly worse once Wintersday ends). If your new policy is to make a game that’s rewarding and fun only for a minority, I honestly think my days in GW2 are numbered. I’m becoming very frustrated lately and I don’t think I’m the only one.

Free To Play. GW2 is no longer Buy To Play no matter what anyone says it’s now Freemium. The entire design of the game from going FTP forward is how to get gem sales and convert FTP into spenders. I never play FTP games because I can’t stand the design. Grind to the point of grabbing the plastic is all they do, welcome to the new Tyria.

No, just NO!

All I read here is hate for F2P and F2P players that causes you to have flawed and misguided theories of why there is a 10k drink achievement for Wintersday.

Which of course has nothing to do with the core game going F2P, but looks to have everything to do with blaming another player type for something that really only impacts you (and other full players).

Have you even tried the whole F2P model?

If so then you would know that its design (and limitations) is actually quite ingenious compared to other F2P games as its focus is not in trying to milk new F2P players from their money.

They have actually did a remarkable job with creating a F2P game that will actually let you enjoy just about every aspect of the core game (even with a few major limitations) without having to pay anything if they were so inclined, and it really is what they advertise. Simply a way to see what is offered while letting their game do the talking for them.

I have been playing since launch (this account right here), but I did create a F2P to introduce my kids to the game and be on equal level with them while they were seeing if this was something that they liked enough to purchase. It did its job (as advertised), and my kids are waiting for their upgrade come Christmas. All without being blocked off by a “Cash Grab” beyond nudges of seeing why getting the full game was a good thing, and yet at no time did the kids (or I on that account) feel a need (let alone pressure) to have to buy Gems in order to keep playing or accessing the game.

However, going back to the main point of how this isn’t about the game going F2P. F2P cannot even buy/sell the drinks which of course also restricts their ability to obtain the other needed items to complete Winter’s Presence. So where is ArenaNet trying to turn F2P into spenders with this?

Yeah, thats what I thought. Nowhere. So then it really ONLY affects full access players, but even if this was some conspiracy to get you to buy Gems to convert to gold it would be no different than other things ArenaNet has done since launch (well before F2P) with things like the Karka chests and gem bought keys.

Which means in the end this still has nothing to do with being about the game going F2P as they have used similiar types of tactics to encourage your parting of monety since launch. Its ALWAYS been about designing ways to sell Gems, etc to increase sales/profit while in many ways giving us fun options and things.

In the end. You don’t want to buy gems to get gold to buy drinks, and it only affects you if your full access. Similiar things have been done since launch and it does not equal being the fault of F2P. Especially when they cannot even make partial use of the ability your being inconvienced by.

You read correctly, I HATE Free To Play, I HATE it. I paid full price (max as I have a CE) for GW2 and they stole from me when they took GW2 FTP. I don’t care if you like it or don’t mind it My money is mine, not yours.

Free To Play games are a joke and I avoid them because this is what they do. They add so much grind that a player with a job and a family will shortcut the grind by using a credit card. That’s what Mad King and Winter’s Day post Free To Play have been… FTP style credit card simulators.

Don’t tell me to enjoy, accept, welcome or rejoice over having a product I paid for given away for free. FYI that Q for the jumping puzzle is a bit longer because free players need gifts too, even though the whole game’s a gift to them.

Free To Play is exactly what’s wrong with the game.

Gaile Gray.6029:

• Wintersday is scheduled to end on January 12, 2016.

Not really a day then, is it.

Ze Dos Cavalos.6132:

well I have almost 2k drinks so far from farming gifts so ya I think is possible to get 10k without buying any drink just need to farm a lot :/

by farm a lot I mean do jp, I do 16runs in 30 min so jump jump a lot!!

seriously? I can’t even finish one JP , it’s not my thingie so your advice is useless for me :/

Nika.3946:

Ze Dos Cavalos.6132:

well I have almost 2k drinks so far from farming gifts so ya I think is possible to get 10k without buying any drink just need to farm a lot :/

by farm a lot I mean do jp, I do 16runs in 30 min so jump jump a lot!!

seriously? I can’t even finish one JP , it’s not my thingie so your advice is useless for me :/

Yeah, grinding a JP for hours upon hours just to get 10k drinks in order to finish a collection wasn’t my intention on how I wanted to spend the Christmas holidays and New Year.

Aidenwolf.5964:

You read correctly, I HATE Free To Play, I HATE it. I paid full price (max as I have a CE) for GW2 and they stole from me when they took GW2 FTP. I don’t care if you like it or don’t mind it My money is mine, not yours.

Free To Play games are a joke and I avoid them because this is what they do. They add so much grind that a player with a job and a family will shortcut the grind by using a credit card. That’s what Mad King and Winter’s Day post Free To Play have been… FTP style credit card simulators.

Don’t tell me to enjoy, accept, welcome or rejoice over having a product I paid for given away for free. FYI that Q for the jumping puzzle is a bit longer because free players need gifts too, even though the whole game’s a gift to them.

Free To Play is exactly what’s wrong with the game.

Well that’s what happens with software (as with any consumer product). It devalues, and instead of just letting it die out while becoming nothing more than the foundation of future expansions they decided to make a bold marketing move to help promote future growth to the player base.

It just so happened to have got stuck with an unfair F2P label (people immediately think Korean F2P model and shy away) that does not work or fit these newer hybrid F2P models, but then again in reality GW 1 & 2 has always been looked at by players of various MMO’s as F2P as it has never had a monthly membership fee.

Which is unfair to GW2 as its F2P does not have “buy in options” that allow it to stay free while having more benefit (to either the player or ArenaNet) than a full account.

It does what they wanted. It gives a nice chance to experience the core game without taking away from or impacting the benefits of what being a full account means.

FYI though I wasn’t telling you what to “enjoy, accept, welcome or rejoice over” as my post was simply pointing out an objective argument (based on having owned GW2 since launch and using a F2P account) to your blaming only F2P for this design trend.

As I said above F2P is of no benefit to full players let alone ArenaNet in regards to these past couple months when it comes to these new grinds other than it nudging them to upgrade to full account at best.

So again. Other than hate for the sake of hating you cannot even back up your claim to blame to show how these design choices are even due to F2P.

You don’t like it, and you don’t have to like it, but unless you plan to stop playing you are stuck having to accept it. Like it or not.

In the end though this game has always had a grind (just as GW1 did) in some form that resulted in potential money making for ArenaNet well before F2P existed.

Living World event chests requiring (outside the very rare key drop) you to buy them with Gems by either farming gold and converting it to Gems or opening your wallet.

Then there was the Molten Jetpack that required you to keep grinding the dungeon in hopes to get its drop, or somehow grinding enough money to buy it, or yet again opening your wallet to buy Gems to convert to gold in order to buy it.

We really must have been playing two very different versions of GW2 since launch, because I can toss out plenty of things that have been like this or worse from time periods way before F2P that show that this has always been a “credit card simulator”, and all you have to hide behind is to simply blame F2P instead of the real issues.

Its fine though. We all have to keep our own realities sane somehow.

For me its seeing that this is a company that behind the game is in it to make money to turn a profit, pay employees, and keep the money mak…er, game going as long as they can.

At least if your going to be mad about something base it on its real source, and that is that ArenaNet wants YOUR money right now. Not some F2P that is not a sure thing.

how do you feel do 1200 round jumping puzzle?
this is easy but boring ……..

Michael Fejervary.8576:

Aidenwolf.5964:

You read correctly, I HATE Free To Play, I HATE it. I paid full price (max as I have a CE) for GW2 and they stole from me when they took GW2 FTP. I don’t care if you like it or don’t mind it My money is mine, not yours.

Free To Play games are a joke and I avoid them because this is what they do. They add so much grind that a player with a job and a family will shortcut the grind by using a credit card. That’s what Mad King and Winter’s Day post Free To Play have been… FTP style credit card simulators.

Don’t tell me to enjoy, accept, welcome or rejoice over having a product I paid for given away for free. FYI that Q for the jumping puzzle is a bit longer because free players need gifts too, even though the whole game’s a gift to them.

Free To Play is exactly what’s wrong with the game.

Well that’s what happens with software (as with any consumer product). It devalues, and instead of just letting it die out while becoming nothing more than the foundation of future expansions they decided to make a bold marketing move to help promote future growth to the player base.

It just so happened to have got stuck with an unfair F2P label (people immediately think Korean F2P model and shy away) that does not work or fit these newer hybrid F2P models, but then again in reality GW 1 & 2 has always been looked at by players of various MMO’s as F2P as it has never had a monthly membership fee.

Which is unfair to GW2 as its F2P does not have “buy in options” that allow it to stay free while having more benefit (to either the player or ArenaNet) than a full account.

It does what they wanted. It gives a nice chance to experience the core game without taking away from or impacting the benefits of what being a full account means.

FYI though I wasn’t telling you what to “enjoy, accept, welcome or rejoice over” as my post was simply pointing out an objective argument (based on having owned GW2 since launch and using a F2P account) to your blaming only F2P for this design trend.

As I said above F2P is of no benefit to full players let alone ArenaNet in regards to these past couple months when it comes to these new grinds other than it nudging them to upgrade to full account at best.

So again. Other than hate for the sake of hating you cannot even back up your claim to blame to show how these design choices are even due to F2P.

You don’t like it, and you don’t have to like it, but unless you plan to stop playing you are stuck having to accept it. Like it or not.

In the end though this game has always had a grind (just as GW1 did) in some form that resulted in potential money making for ArenaNet well before F2P existed.

Living World event chests requiring (outside the very rare key drop) you to buy them with Gems by either farming gold and converting it to Gems or opening your wallet.

Then there was the Molten Jetpack that required you to keep grinding the dungeon in hopes to get its drop, or somehow grinding enough money to buy it, or yet again opening your wallet to buy Gems to convert to gold in order to buy it.

We really must have been playing two very different versions of GW2 since launch, because I can toss out plenty of things that have been like this or worse from time periods way before F2P that show that this has always been a “credit card simulator”, and all you have to hide behind is to simply blame F2P instead of the real issues.

Its fine though. We all have to keep our own realities sane somehow.

For me its seeing that this is a company that behind the game is in it to make money to turn a profit, pay employees, and keep the money mak…er, game going as long as they can.

At least if your going to be mad about something base it on its real source, and that is that ArenaNet wants YOUR money right now. Not some F2P that is not a sure thing.

1st two festivals after FTP both contain the Korean style grind you say the game doesn’t. These events before FTP did not.

Aidenwolf.5964:

1st two festivals after FTP both contain the Korean style grind you say the game doesn’t. These events before FTP did not.

I never said it wasn’t a grind, because it is, but even then it is no where near those styles of “cash grab” grinds, and to be honest with your hatred for F2P you should then know that the difference in the F2P your hating on compared to what F2P is in GW2 is huge.

Those F2P games are designed to revolve around milking the player out of real life money as the only option of continued progression during every aspect of the overall gameplay. Not just during a few silly achievements.

Look I don’t find any issue with your feelings of this being a grind or potential money maker for ArenaNet if those players who choose to do so buy Gems to convert to Gold.

I just cannot wrap my head around the idea that the last two event grinds relate to F2P being the fault of why the achievements have been harder for us full account players when F2P cannot even partake in the achievement without actually opening the gifts (or receiving donations of the drinks in large amounts through in-game mail) themselves while hoping that they can fully farm 10k drinks in two weeks.

It just makes no sense for it to be harder due to a whole account class that cannot even buy or sell the required drinks.

I think if anything that this really would have more to do with all of the feedback from players claiming that the game is to easy and wanting things to be made harder, or just plain bad development choices.

At least development choices seem more believable as getting the piece from the drinking achievement is not even remotely comparable to what is involved with getting the other pieces.

So if anything I agree with those on the forum who have been more constructive with their ideas (while not blaming an account type or players family status) said that this should have been separated into related achievements (as others are) with one giving the item needed and the other giving the title.

I think at least 2.5k drinks would be right had the development team went that way as 1k would have just been way to small of an amount.

Michael Fejervary.8576:

So if anything I agree with those on the forum who have been more constructive with their ideas (while not blaming an account type or players family status) said that this should have been separated into related achievements (as others are) with one giving the item needed and the other giving the title.

I think at least 2.5k drinks would be right had the development team went that way as 1k would have just been way to small of an amount.

I don’t think 2.5k drinks is the right amount either. In my opinion, the drinks really aren’t supposed to be the monetary cost to the item, as that’s handled elsewhere by the three Mystic Forge trophies and the collection unlock item itself.

This portion of the collection is thematically similar to the other achievement trophies: time-limited, and acquired easily through normal gameplay, though the magnitude is way off. When you compare it to those other trophies, 2.5k still seems too high, while 1k is still normal gameplay; there’s no push to identify and grind the most lucrative activity in the festival.